What Now? Julia slammed her laptop shut and slumped over her desk. “Ugh! What are they thinking? My team’s gonna hate this!” We had just sat down to discuss her goals when the email arrived from her regional manager. The email listed sales goals she and her team were expected to meet…goals from headquarters that neither » Read More
Make It Stop! I could almost hear his anguish… A young supervisor had gone to Twitter in desperation: “How can I ever motivate my team? Please help!!!” His fatigue and frustration were palpable, but they were also causing him immense problems and his credibility and influence with his team had suffered badly. The Consequence of » Read More
5 Ways to Prevent Your Employees from Turning into the Walking Dead Zombies are in vogue right now. I confess I’m a fan of TV show The Walking Dead. I turn my head away at the zombie action, but I am attracted to the human stories, the drama, and the symbolism. Do you want zombies » Read More
Dennis W. Bakke is a CEO and an entrepreneur. He is currently the manager of Imagine Schools, a commercial charter school. He is also an author of Creating Abundance, published in 1984, the best seller Joy of Work: A Revolutionary approach to fun on the job, published in 2005, Purpose Matters, published in 2008, and » Read More
At a time when companies are looking for ways to reduce costs and become more productive, employee recognition can be a powerful force for engaging employees and unleashing their full potential. Unfortunately, there is a tendency for managers to underestimate the power of employee recognition. They treat it like a warm fuzzy concept instead of » Read More
When employees come to speak with you, do you put everything down, turn off your phone, and feel truly eager to hear their thoughts? Few managers actually do this on a daily basis, and as a result, they are like air traffic controllers without radar. Listening is an active quest to understand the knowledge, concerns, insights and ideas your employees bring to the table, and you need this information to do your job well.
It’s critical to recognize that “You get what you got until you decided to create what you want.” Organizations come to be managed as a result of a long series of small and large decisions, decisions appropriate to the needs and the challenges at the time. But over the years, the accumulation of these decisions » Read More
Earlier this year, Emily Esfahani Smith wrote an article in The Atlantic titled, “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy.” Now, I’m not ready to throw in the towel on my pursuit of happily ever after… but it’s hard not to take note of the frequent mention of ‘meaning’ in articles, books, and other works » Read More
Everyone, it seems, is talking about change and the need to change. But somehow we keep repeating a familiar pattern. It’s like going to the edge of a 50-foot cliff and jumping when all you’ve witnessed are others ahead of you jumping away. As a result, you don’t see what they did before they jumped, » Read More
One of the reasons I am passionate about leadership is because I believe our leaders now and in the future have the skill, position, influence and potential to help prevent and cure suffering at work. Suffering you might ask? Isn’t that a strong word? Well yes it is, and no, I am not even talking » Read More
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